1
9

J
u
l
y

2
0
0
6

Spend a Little

Robert Scoble writes about how “more and more startups and companies are gonna go the Gmail route” because it’s easier to get started.

He’s absolutely wrong. Would you work with a business that just had Gmail addresses? We wouldn’t rely on a third party beta product to be at the core of our company’s operation. It’s not difficult to get reliable web hosting and attendant applications. Takes about, oh, two days and costs a couple of quid. Ah, but two days is a long time in startups? Well, perhaps, but just launch your beta two days early to compensate.

And you certainly shouldn’t launch your corporate blog on a free blog site. No matter how ‘unofficial’ it appears to be. What happens when the company servicing it disappears? Who owns the content? What impression does this give to your clients?

It all amounts to this:

  • We’re not confident about our business to invest money in it
  • We may not be around tomorrow
  • We aren’t professionals

Spend a couple of quid. It makes a difference.

Permalink | General Musings

2 Responses to "Spend a Little"

  1. 19 July 2006 at 05:56 PM

    Easton Ellsworth wrote:

    Or dollars, as the case may be :) .

    Good point – while so many Web services are free, it may be well worth it for a business to spend a little to get something of far greater value. I think your suggestion that a corporate blog deserves its own domain is a very valid one. A notable exception might be a blog like the official Google corporate blog, which is hosted at Blogspot.com – but then of course Google owns Blogspot.

  2. 28 December 2006 at 05:04 PM

    ninthspace » Kish Mauve: Modern Love wrote:

    [...] Undoubtedly, SiteMaker has the features that an online band requires, but when I wrote Spend A Little, I should have titled it Spend A Little On The Right Things. This isn’t either. A custom-designed blog with a couple of third party widgets could do the job. [...]

Leave a Reply

Grab the RSS feed, or have a wander through the archives

copyright ©2006 and so on, ninthspace.org, except quotations, lyrics and some images which are the rights of their respective holders